"Watch out! It's going to counterattack!"
Tang San, who had been on guard, immediately cried out in alarm. He was about to fling several Bone-Piercing Nails from his hand.
Yu Xiaogang was even more frantic. He shouted, "You beast! How dare you! Luo Sanpao! Protect me!"
"Nobody move!"
Su Yun suddenly raised a hand and shouted, stopping everyone in their tracks.
He didn't dodge.
Because at the very instant Bai Ze charged at him, he hadn't sensed the slightest trace of murderous intent. Instead, he felt an extremely urgent and immense mental fluctuation.
Boom!
Bai Ze pressed its forehead against Su Yun's brow.
There was no sound, yet a thunderclap seemed to explode inside Su Yun's mind.
An immense, cryptic stream of information, steeped in the passage of time, surged along the skin where they touched and flooded into the depths of Su Yun's consciousness like a raging tide.
It wasn't language, nor was it writing.
It was a series of execution diagrams, optimized through millions of iterations and stripped of every redundant step.
Su Yun's pupils contracted sharply.
He looked at Bai Ze before him, panting heavily, blood streaming from its nose, yet its eyes glinting with pride. A storm surged through his heart.
Su Yun pushed up his sunglasses, and the playful curve of his lips widened.
"Well, I'll be..."
Su Yun marveled inwardly. His gaze at Bai Ze changed completely.
"Little thing, just to get yourself a position on the payroll, you really went and... defied fate."
Since the other party had gone so far as to perform a ritual like this, it would be rude of him to keep hesitating.
"Su Yun! What are you doing?!"
Seeing that Su Yun hadn't drawn his gun to shoot—instead, he'd put his weapon away and even bitten his own finger—Yu Xiaogang finally couldn't hold back.
He rushed over in a few strides, spittle flying, his face full of anxious exasperation.
"What are you doing? A blood test to confirm your relationship? Su Yun! Snap out of it! Soul Beasts are cunning. It's trying to bewitch you!"
"For a Soul Master to advance, they have to personally hunt a Soul Beast and absorb the Soul Ring it produces after death! There's never been a precedent for peaceful coexistence! Not only will you fail to obtain a Soul Ring this way, you could even suffer a backlash from its Soul Power and become crippled!"
Tang San's expression was grave as well. He stood ready to kill Bai Ze if it suddenly attacked.
"Brother Su, Grandmaster is right. Those who aren't of our kind will surely have different hearts. It's safer to kill it."
Faced with their incessant chatter, Su Yun didn't even turn around.
He raised his bleeding fingertip and stared fixedly at Bai Ze through his sunglasses.
"Grandmaster, your version needs an update!"
Su Yun reached out. With the single bright-red drop of blood on his fingertip, he gently touched Bai Ze's smooth forehead.
"Contract."
The single word seemed to cross ten thousand years, carrying the power of some supreme law as it softly fell upon this primeval forest.
Buzz—!
A gentle, warm, and utterly sacred golden light erupted from the point where the man and beast touched.
As everyone watched in disbelief, Bai Ze's snow-white body began to turn into light.
It transformed into countless glittering golden particles.
The particles were like living sprites. They danced joyfully around Su Yun before converging into a dazzling Star River and rushing without hesitation into the Star Gate before him.
"Th-this Soul Beast... ascended to immortality?!"
Red Hair stared so hard his eyes nearly popped out, his mouth wide enough to fit a light bulb.
"Did it... sacrifice itself?"
Boom—
Crack, crack, crack!
As Bai Ze's spirit poured into it, the Star Gate behind Su Yun began to shake violently.
The original cold, deep-blue glow rapidly faded as it devoured Bai Ze's power.
In its place shone a glorious light, pure white as jade and sacred beyond defilement.
A Bai Ze relief slowly appeared at the very center of the lintel atop the doorframe.
The relief's eyes were gently closed, its entire body radiating a faint glow. It looked like the divine beast guarding the Gate of Truth, emanating an awe-inspiring majesty that could suppress all creation.
Then an even greater transformation took place.
Szz—
Boom!
Accompanied by a grating sound of space tearing apart, the doorframe, which had been a little short of a person's height and somewhat narrow, suddenly swelled as if inflated!
It stretched sideways!
It rose upward!
In just three seconds,
a massive, pure-white Star Gate, two meters wide and two meters tall, stood imposingly before them!
At that very moment,
the noisy static that had been crackling in Su Yun's ear for ages abruptly disappeared.
Lei Zhan's familiar, booming voice came through, laced with anxiety and relief.
"001! 001! Your signal was cut off for a full fifteen minutes! This is Lei Zhan! How are things on your end?"
Hearing that long-missed roar, Su Yun pushed up his sunglasses, a relieved smile curving his lips.
Everything was back.
And not only was it back, the bandwidth had expanded, too.
That little white lamb had done great!
"Relax, Captain Lei."
Su Yun gazed at the majestic white gate before him and replied calmly.
"Nothing serious. I just expanded the capacity of our transmission link."
The light gradually faded.
Everything fell quiet once more.
The lively Bai Ze was gone, replaced by the silent relief on the Star Gate.
Su Yun could sense that whenever he used his Martial Soul, all he had to do was focus his thoughts, and the little thing would leap out of the relief to help him.
At Su Yun's feet, a Soul Ring slowly rose.
It wasn't yellow, the color symbolizing a hundred years.
Nor was it purple, the color symbolizing a thousand years.
It was a white Soul Ring.
But it wasn't as stark white as an ordinary Ten-Year Soul Ring. Instead, it had a strange, translucent quality like crystal, and faint stars could be seen swirling within it.
The whole scene fell silent.
Red Hair and the others didn't know the first thing about it. They only saw that the gate had grown bigger and turned white. It looked pretty impressive.
"Whoa! Godfather, your Martial Soul changed color! A big white gate with a big white ring—it's got style! Is that what a strong person's taste looks like?"
But the instant Yu Xiaogang saw the white Soul Ring, it was as if a bolt of thunder had struck him squarely on the crown of his head.
"White... white..."
His notebook fell from his hand and landed in the mud with a slap.
Yu Xiaogang's legs gave way. He collapsed to his knees with a thud, staring blankly at the white Soul Ring beneath Su Yun's feet.
His lips trembled.
"Ten years... It really is... a Ten-Year Soul Ring..."
"It's my fault... It's all because of me..."
Yu Xiaogang suddenly clawed at his hair, his fingernails digging deep into his scalp.
"I told you it was a top-grade mutated Soul Beast... I urged you to attack..."
"I thought it was at least a hundred years old... I thought its mutation could make up for its short lifespan..."
"I personally pushed a peerless genius into the fire..."
The immense contradiction and crushing sense of responsibility shattered Grandmaster's already sensitive and fragile mental defenses.
His eyes went blank, saliva trickled from the corner of his mouth, and he slumped in the mud, muttering incoherently.
"White... No... There are no useless Martial Souls... Only... Ah-ba... Ah-ba-ba..."
Watching Grandmaster, who had been driven into a stupor by the crushing blow, Tang San showed not the slightest sympathy. Only a blazing fury filled his eyes.
"Useless fool!"
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